The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency uploaded hundreds of UFO ‘X-Files’ on their website. The declassified files include never-before-seen top secret files detailing the agency’s work on UFO investigations from the late 1940s to the 1950s.(Photo : Marc Brüneke | Flickr)

Worldwide UFO fans will sure have field day because the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) decided to release hundreds of X-files-like UFO documents on their website. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to see any evidence of intergalactic limbs or crashed UFO sites.

There are, however, hundreds of declassified documents about the agency’s top secret UFO investigations dating from the late 1940s and the 1950s. Many conspiracy theorists point to the CIA, saying that the agency has been involved in many cover ups of UFO sightings to hide the truth from the general public.For some reason, the agency has decided to upload never-before-seen photos and documents in PDF formats.

Among the CIA’s UFO X-Files is the sighting documented by New Jersey resident George Stock. On July 29, 1952 at about 4:30 p.m., Stock and his friend John H. Riely spotted a bizarre aircraft approaching from the sky.

They were allegedly in Stock’s backyard when the strange phenomenon took place. Stock ran inside his house, grabbed his camera and managed to take five clear photos of the disc-shaped, metallic-like object in the sky before it flew away.

Despite the authenticity of the uploaded CIA documents, the agency kept referring to Agents Mulder and Scully of the famous drama series The X-Files.

Did aliens visit the ancient Earth and inspire human cultures? Some people claim so.

UFO enthusiasts often cite June 24, 1947 as the beginning of the modern UFO phenomenon. On that day, Kenneth Arnold coined the term “flying saucer” for the unidentified objects he saw flying past Mount Rainier, and sparked the public’s interest in the idea of alien visitors from another world. But what if aliens had arrived on Earth sooner than that? What if they arrived a lot sooner? That’s the basis of the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, which suggests that alien visitors have been coming to earth for not just decades, but centuries, and maybe even millennia.

Click the image to visit Ancient Aliens Debunked

Notions of an Earth visited the ancient past by aliens from another world date back at least a century. In many ways, the Cthulhu mythos, H. P. Lovecraft’s famous mythology of Great Old Ones from deep space who come to Earth and build eons-old cities, is an iteration of the Ancient Astronaut idea. In fact, it’s quite possible that Lovecraft’s stories greatly influenced Morning of the Magicians, a nonfiction French book written in the 1960s that give serious consideration to the idea of Ancient Astronauts visiting the Earth.

If you’ve heard of the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, however, the man you probably have to thank for it is Swiss author Erich Von Daniken. In 1968, Von Daniken drew on various ideas of ancient aliens, probably including the ideas expressed in Morning of the Magicians, and turned them into a book called Chariots of the Gods? In doing so, he launched the modern Ancient Astronaut hypothesis.

The argument put forth in Chariots of the Gods? is rooted in Clarke’s Third Law, which says that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”” In fact, the second chapter of Chariots of the Gods? sets the stage for the book with precisely that argument. Von Daniken asks readers to imagine what would happen if human spacefarers ever visited a distant world that was populated with a primitive alien culture. He argues that these primitive aliens would lack the vocabulary and knowledge to understand our advanced technology. Instead, they would view their human visitors as divine beings capable of incredible magic.

When our spaceship disappears again into the mists of the universe, our friends will talk about the miracle — “the gods were here!” They will translate it into their simple language and turn it into a saga to be handed down to their sons and daughters.

It’s from this premise, Von Daniken spun his theory: that if other spacefarers visited our primitive Earth cultures, then we too would view them as miraculous gods. And in fact they did visit, he argues, as evidenced by the great works that these primitive cultures simply could not have made on their own and the strange drawings and myths these cultures left behind.

Chariots of the Gods? was a bestseller, as were Von Daniken’s follow-up books with titles like Gods from Outer Space and In Search of Ancient Gods. They created a widespread public awareness of the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis that persists to this day.

Popularity doesn’t equate to quality, of course, and the book itself is full of flawed and spurious logic. As just one example . . .

It was 1962 and American John Glenn was orbiting the Earth in Friendship 7, his capsule on the Mercury-Atlas 6 flight. Ground controllers were mystified at Glenn’s report of fireflies outside his window, strange bright specks that clustered about his ship. The first thought was that they must be ice crystals from Friendship 7’s hydrogen peroxide attitude control rockets, but Glenn was unable to correlate their appearance with the use of the rockets. Astronauts on later flights reported similar bright specks, and eventually we learned enough about the space environment to identify what they were. Spacecraft tend to accumulate clouds of debris and contamination around themselves, and even though Glenn’s rockets sprayed jets of crystals away from the capsule, many of the crystals would gather in this contamination cloud, where they reflected sunlight and interacted with other gases in the cloud. Experiments on board Skylab in the 1970’s using quartz-crystal microbalances confirmed and further characterized this phenomenon. The case of John Glenn’s mysterious fireflies was solved.

The Apollo 16 “flying saucer”, compared with a view of the spolight boom from a different missionPhoto credit: NASA

The stories of our humble explorations of the space around our planet tell of courage, danger, and adventure. But do they conceal another element as well? For as long as humans have had space programs, there have been darker tales flying alongside: tales of mysterious UFOs, apparently alien spacecraft monitoring our progress. These stories come from the early days of the Soviet launches, from the Mercury program, the Gemini program, the space shuttle flights, and perhaps most infamously from the Apollo flights to the moon.

Like pilots, astronauts are often given something of a pass whenever they report a UFO, a pass that presumes it’s impossible for someone with flight training to misidentify anything they see in the sky. Most famously, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, has long maintained that most UFOs are alien spacecraft and that the government is covering up its ongoing active relations with alien cultures. Coming from a real astronaut, Mitchell’s views are often quite convincing to the public.

NASA’s reaction to Mitchell was anticlimactic, but highlighted that their business is launching things into space, not studying UFO reports . . .

The items on this varied list may not all warrant heightened vigilance and tin foil hats, but better safe than sorry. So we’re all better prepared for welcoming the Lizard People, when they finally choose to reveal themselves, and assimilating to the New World Order, here are some of the best conspiracy theories and urban legends in the U.S.

10 • Area 51, probably underground, Nev.

Arguably, the country’s most famous conspiracy theory is focused on this remote part of Edwards Air Force Base in Southern Nevada. Also known as Groom Lake, it’s assumed the base is used to test aircraft and weapons systems. The air space overhead is absolutely restricted. Even Air Force pilots aren’t allowed to breach the perimeter. The extraordinary secrecy surrounding the base has fueled several Area 51 conspiracy theories over the years ranging from a lab/prison for studying aliens (both living and dead), a meeting place for Earthlings and aliens working in tandem on various projects, reverse engineering and testing of captured/recovered alien technology, developing a weather control system, time travel and teleportation technology and much more. All that said, nothing can be certain as everything that occurs in Area 51 is classified as “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.” The CIA didn’t publicly acknowledge the existence of the base until July 2013.

9 • Denver Airport, Colo.

A detail of a mural in Denver International Airport, subject of much conspiracy theorist interest. A plea for peace, or a plan for future martial law?

Another conspiracy theory layer cake spot is Denver International Airport. That it was built while Denver had a perfectly good airport much closer to the city is the jumping off point for these theories. (For the record, experts have pointed out that the runway layout at the old airport was no longer efficient enough for the increased traffic.) It’s believed that building the new airport allowed for the secret construction of an underground headquarters for the Illuminati, or the New World Order, or the Neo-Nazis, or the Lizard People and so on. The vaguely Swastika-shaped runways, the (admittedly) disturbing murals and sculptures, and odd words engraved in the floor also fuel the theories. Furthermore, there is the question of funding. A stone in the terminal says the airport was funded by “The New World Airport Commission,” a nebulous entity, sanely theorized to be a group of local businesses, though many claim it doesn’t exist.

8 • UFO cover-up, Roswell, N.M.

Though it’s now mainly fueled by local businesses wanting to cash in on tourist interest, the (alleged!) Roswell UFO incident of 1947 is the most popular (alleged!) UFO cover-up of all time and still merits time and energy among conspiracy theorists and movie/TV writers. Various people claim that a spacecraft with alien occupants crashed on a ranch near Roswell in June or July 1947, which was quietly hauled away for study, possibly by our friends at Area 51. The Air Force reported at the time that the object was a surveillance balloon. The conspiracy chatter didn’t flare up until 1978 when Major Jesse Marcel, who was involved with the recovery of the debris, gave an interview describing a spacecraft crash cover-up by the military. Since then additional witnesses have emerged, describing the cover-up and alien autopsies. These days, even passionate pro-UFO advocates generally dismiss Roswell as a hoax.

7 • Grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas

The grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, where the 1963 assasination of US President John F. Kennedy took place in Dallas.

The Warren Commission concluded that there was no conspiracy involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. However, after Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, an event that also brims with conspiracy, the theories that Oswald didn’t act alone or maybe wasn’t involved at all started flying. The situation was exacerbated in 1979 when the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations announced “…a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President.” Furthermore, while he was living in Belarus, it’s said Oswald was such a terrible shot that friends were afraid to go hunting with him. The dazzling list of conspiracy theories put forward at one point or another involve the collusion of one or more parties including the CIA, the FBI and/or FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, Castro himself, then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the KGB.

6 • Kensington Runestone, Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minn.

Kensington Runestone

Evidence that Scandinavian explorers pushed as far as the Midwest of the future United States in the 14th century or a 19th-century hoax? The Kensington Runestone is a 200 lb slab of greywacke inscribed with runes on the face and side. The story goes the stone was found in 1898 in the rural township of Solem, Minnesota (it gets its name from Kensington, a nearby settlement) by Swedish immigrant Olof Olsson Ohman. The Stone appears to describe an expedition of Norwegians and Swedes who camped in the area, then retreated to their boat at “the inland sea” after 10 were slaughtered by unknown assailants. Runologists and linguistic experts overwhelming agree that the language used on the stone is too modern (circa the 19th century, coincidentally) and didn’t match other writing samples from the 1300s. However, the legend persists, being occasionally revived with new evidence and arguments, some as recently the 1990s.

The only unsolved case of air piracy in U.S. history was perpetrated by an unidentified man who the media came to call “D. B. Cooper.” (The hijacker purchased his ticket using the alias “Dan Cooper.”) On November 24, 1971, Cooper hijacked a passenger plane (a Boeing 727) during a Portland-Seattle flight. Claiming he had a bomb, he made his ransom plans known to the crew. On the ground in Seattle, Cooper released the passengers after officials gave him the requested $200,000 (equivalent to $1,160,000 today) and two parachutes. With only Cooper and the crew aboard, the plane then took off heading for Mexico. When they stopped in Reno to refuel, Cooper was gone, having jumped from the rear stairs while the plane was likely still over Washington State. Cooper was never found and it’s widely believe he couldn’t have possibly survived the fall, over remote mountainous wilderness, at night, wearing a trench coat and loafers, no helmet, into an initial wind chill at the airplane’s altitude of “70∞ F. The FBI investigation into the case remains open to this day.

SETI uses the Arecibo’s 305-meter telescope — the largest in the world — to scan the sky for signals from alien civilizations all year round.Credit: Arecibo Observatory/NSF

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, may be becoming more mainstream, as evidenced by this week’s House Science and Technology Committee hearing, which included testimony by two well-known SETI hunters, Seth Shostack and Dan Werthimer.

But the hearing took an odd turn when U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican, had the floor.

“I think I might ask the question everyone in this room wants to ask,” Collins said. “Have you watched ‘Ancient Aliens’ and what’s your comment about that series?”

The television show, broadcast on The History Channel, explores purported extraterrestrials’ visits to Earth over millions of years.

Shostak, senior scientist at the California-based SETI Institute, started off diplomatically.

“The public is fascinated with the idea that we may be being visited now, or may have been visited in the past, the so-called UFO phenomenon,” he said.

Then he got down to business:

“I personally don’t share the conviction that we are being visited. I don’t think that that would be something that all the governments of the world had managed to obfuscate — to keep secret. I don’t believe that.

“The idea that maybe we were visited during the time of the ancient Egyptians and so forth, keep in mind that in the 4.5-billion year history of the Earth, the time of the ancient Egyptians was yesterday. So again, why were they there then? What was it that brought them to Earth? I have no idea and I don’t find very good evidence,” Shostak said.

Cereologists don’t all agree on how crop circles form, but there are some wild theories out there, including freak weather and UFOs. Also, hoaxers confessed to making hundreds of circles. Tune in to learn more about the theories surrounding crop circles.

I will do my best to make the occasional post, but just in case i’m a little less attentive than usual or a little slower with the posts, you’ll know why. I wouldn’t want you to think i was abducted by aliens or anything.😉

I’ll be back in action right about April 30th!!!!

In the mean time, with almost 1,700 current posts, use the search tool, links and keywords to the right to find some worthwhile reading.

ALSO . . . do stop by the iLLumiNuTTi facebook page. I should be able to post a few stories over there when the family isn’t looking.

The Internet was meant to usher in a new enlightenment, instead it is became the breeding ground of ideas increasingly at odds with reality.

The Reptilian’s cloaking field breaks down and begins to phase shift, its inhuman visage briefly visible through a haze of holographic error. Slowed down and set to music, it is an eerie, emotive, and strangely beautiful sight. Our alien slavemasters the Annunaki are getting sloppy, not even caring if their true forms are visible to us any more. Wake up, sheeple, wake up and see what is before your eyes!

Or, at least this is what some followers of David Icke and other reptilian “researchers” seem to think. According to this video, which at time of writing has over 155,000 views, it appears that some of his disciples are so seduced by the strange worldview that they see trans-dimentional shapeshifters where others see video glitches or interference errors. A new face for an ancient malevolence, hitherto visualised mentally in dragon statues or crumby drawings of lizard-men. YouTuber MKirkbll comments “Finally! A legitimate shapeshifting video! I so badly wanted to believe. Now I can. Thank you.” Like an X-Files era cliche, MKirkbll here “wants to believe”. And he is so desperate to believe in something, he is willing to believe in anything, as long as it all fits together to tell an understandable story and gives him a sense of belonging.

It is easy to look at such nonsense and laugh, but the existence of such beliefs tell us something much deeper about human psychology and our need to make sense of the world. Since the earliest times humans have together woven complex and colourful mythologies to explain the the world around them, and today is no different. During our evolution, our brains’ storytelling ability acted as a form of data compression to keep track of what information it deemed useful, tying sensory prompts to emotional and behavioural responses. The consequence of using language and stories to keep track of environmental information was the gradual development of a narrative Self. Through studying psychology, we also know how identity construction within a social environment leads to emergent group behaviours that in turn tell us how group narratives are formed.

Some of those lessons are particularly relevant to the online realm, where a breezy brand of digital utopianism has led to a belief that the free flow of information will lead to an end of ignorance and the triumph of reason. Instead, we see the rise of bizarre new ideologies and ideas spreading virally across the web, ushering in not a New Enlightenment, but an Age of Unreason.

Emergent Hierarchies

Group Psychology has been extensively studied over the last half century with theories supported by strong experimental evidence and predictive ability. Leon Festinger’s famous 1956 study of a flying saucer cult documented the moments in which the group’s ideology evolved in light of a failed doomsday prophecy. Cult leader Marian Keech had told her followers the world would end at midnight while they, the chosen few, would be swooped away to safety in the comfort of a spacecraft. However as armageddon failed to materialise, minutes ticked awkwardly by and the cult members began to wonder what was going to happen next. Eventually Keech concocted an absurd excuse to explain why the world had not ended; our prayer averted the apocalypse!

The study, which was a precursor to his theory of Cognitive Dissonance, is famous for predicting which members of the group would drift away and which would rationalise away the failure and turn in into something to strengthen rather than weaken their beliefs. But also interesting is that Festinger reported that . . .

Conspiracy theories about hidden knowledge of extraterrestrials have been around for decades, but one of these theories has an interesting twist: What if the world’s governments are using pop culture to prepare humanity for the arrival of aliens?

From faked lunar landings to invisible WWII warships, here are six conspiracy theories and the genre films they inspired…

“Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face,” Sterling Hayden’s General Jack D Ripper coldly announces in Stanley Kubrick’s breathtakingly funny satire, Dr Strangelove.

Ripper’s conspiracy theory, that the commies are secretly trying to compromise our “precious bodily fluids”, becomes his harebrained reason for unleashing a missile strike on the USSR. And just as Ripper was inspired by this strange notion to trigger a nuclear apocalypse, so filmmakers have been inspired by conspiracy theories to make all kinds of science fiction and horror movies – some funny, some tense and absorbing, others terrifying.

Here, then, is a selection of six real-world conspiracy theories and the varied movies they inspired – and funnily enough, Stanley Kubrick even pops up in one of the more familiar entries…

1. The Philadelphia experiment

The conspiracy: The story goes that, during the chaos of World War II, a group of scientists working for the US navy were carrying out an experiment that could have altered the face of the battle completely: they were attempting to make a warship invisible. The warship in question was the USS Eldridge, docked in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, and the experiment supposedly took place in October 1943.

A scientist named Dr Franklin Reno was said to be the mind behind the project, having taken inspiration from Einstein’s unified field theory – and according to the legend, it was a success. Not only was the ship rendered invisible, but in subsequent experiments, apparently teleported to another location 200 miles away and back again.

The experiment wasn’t without its side-effects, however; sailors were said to have suffered from a range of ailments, including nausea, mental trauma, invisibility and spontaneous combustion. It’s even said that some sailors were found partly embedded in the structure of the ship itself.

For its part, the US navy has always denied that the Philadelphia experiment ever took place, but this has merely added to the claims that the incident was covered up. Despite repeated counter-claims that the experiment is a mixture of hoax and misheard information (the navy really were looking at ways of making ships undetectable to magnetic torpedoes at the time, which could have somehow been misinterpreted as ‘invisible’), the legend’s endured, partly thanks to books like The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility.

The obvious question, though, is if the US navy managed to make a ship invisibile so long ago, why hasn’t this technology become widespread since? The supporters of the conspiracy would probably argue that the US navy uses invisibility all the time – we just can’t see the evidence.

The movies: “The experiment that should never have happened 41 years ago is still going on,” read the tagline to The Philadelphia Experiment, which took the legend and turned it into a time-travel adventure-romance. Michael Pare and Bobby Di Cicco play two sailors aboard the USS Eldridge who find themselves thrown 40 years into the future by the experiment, and then have to figure out a means of closing off a rift in time and space that could destroy the entire planet.

Although not a big hit at the time of release, The Philadelphia Experiment is almost as persistent as the legend behind it: a belated sequel materialised in 1993, while a made-for-TV remake appeared on the Syfy Channel in 2012. The Philadelphia Experiment is also a good example of how urban legends perpetuate themselves through storytelling.

In the late 1980s, a chap named Al Bielek happened to catch a showing of the 1984 Philadelphia Experiment movie on television, which he claimed dislodged repressed memories of his own involvement in the 1943 project. In later interviews, he not only stated that he’d been a sailor aboard the USS Eldritch, but also that he’d been sent forward in time to the year 1983. Mind you, Bielek also claimed to have taken a time tunnel to Mars, conversed with aliens, travelled forward in time to the year 2137, and back to the year 100,000 BC. Bielek’s claims then appeared to inspire the makers of the film 100,000 BC, a straight-to-video action film where members of the Philadelphia Experiment go back to the time of the dinosaurs.

Like a feedback loop, legends grow and change as they’re told and retold.

2. The Roswell incident

Major Jesse Marcel from the Roswell Army Air Field with debris found 75 miles north west of Roswell, N.M., in 1947. The debris was identified as that of a radar target.

The conspiracy: On the 8th July 1947, the Roswell Daily Record ran a front page story which read, “RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region”. The US military later retracted their initial statement, saying instead that the debris they’d collected was from a crashed weather balloon rather than a unidentified flying object, but it was too late – one of the most discussed and famous conspiracy theories was born.

Accusations that the American government had recovered a flying saucer – or at least parts of one – grew in the years that followed, and stories began to circulate that living occupants of the craft had been taken to Area 51 (a now infamous military base) in New Mexico. By the 1990s, a range of books, eye-witness accounts, TV documentaries and even purported footage of alien autopsies had all materialised, all appearing to lend weight to the theory that the US government was hiding knowledge of flying saucers and visitors from outer space.

The movies: Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) remains one of the most lavish and well-made films to deal with the UFO phenomenon, taking in sightings of lights in the sky, abduction by aliens, and also the topic of a conspiracy on the part of the US government. Close Encounters’ conclusion even suggests that America’s scientists have engaged in some kind of foreign exchange program with visiting aliens, as Richard Dreyfuss’ blue-collar hero clambers into a cathedral-like ship for a ride into the unknown.

The 1986 adventure film Flight Of The Navigator may also have taken a hint of inspiration from the Roswell incident and other stories like it, as a young boy takes a ride in a crashed, metallic UFO secretly held by NASA. Vaguely echoing what theorists argue happened in 1943, Flight Of The Navigator’s scientists had whisked the ship from public view and attempted to cover up the craft’s true nature by describing it to the police as an experimental space laboratory.

Interest in the Roswell incident began to rise again in the 1990s, possibly due to the publication of several books which brought forth new claims of downed saucers and conspiracies. One of these would become Roswell, a 1994 TV movie starring Kyle MacLachlan as a US major attempting to uncover the hidden truth about the crash. The quest for uncovering buried truths also provided the basis for The X-Files, Chris Carter’s TV series that received a movie spin-off (itself about aliens and government cover-ups) in 1998.

Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996) made explicit use of Roswell lore; amid the destruction of an alien invasion, it’s eventually revealed to Bill Pullman’s President Whitmore that the military really had captured an alien space craft and three occupants in 1947, and that they’d been stored and studied for the past 49 years at Area 51. The repaired space craft then came in handy for the third act, where it was used to plant a computer virus in the invaders’ mother ship – a plot point that’s still derided by some movie geeks 18 years later.

About 12 months before Independence Day came out, a piece of black-and-white footage purportedly shot at Area 51 first appeared on television. Appearing to depict the autopsy of a humanoid creature, the 17-minute film caused an immediate fuss in the media, despite widespread suspicions that it was a hoax.

The chap who first brought the film to the public’s attention, a British entrepreneur named Ray Santilli, later admitted that the footage had been faked, but insisted that it was based on some real film he’d seen a few years earlier – when the film degraded past the point where it was watchable, Santilli said he’d funded a reconstruction of what he’d previously witnessed. The whole curious incident became the basis of the 2006 comedy Alien Autopsy, starring British TV entertainment duo Ant and Dec.

If you want an example of how one single event can inspire a range of stories, look no further than the Roswell incident.

In the past few decades, this perfectly ordinary military base in the middle of the desert in southern Nevada has taken on mythic status. Most military bases have tight security, and only authorized military personnel and their contractors are allowed on base. This particular base is top secret, with much tighter security than most military land. Not only is it surrounded by a secured perimeter and motion detectors in the ground, but the guards travel the perimeter regularly, and have video security cameras monitoring everything that comes near the fence. It is also located in one of the most remote areas of sparsely populated Nevada, more than two hours of driving north out of Las Vegas. Because there is no way to see the base from the paved road, even from the highest peaks outside the base except Tikaboo Peak (a long hard desert hike), it can only be viewed from the air or from space. Naturally, that high level of secrecy has led to all sorts of speculation about what happens there, and an entire industry of books and movies and TV shows which need only mention the phrase “Area 51” and immediately their audience assumes that there are aliens or some kinds of weird government experiments going on there.

First of all, let’s clarify one misconception: the proper name of the base. Some of the common names of the base are “Groom Lake” or “Homey Airport” on civilian aeronautics maps, or the longer “Nevada Test and Training Range” in CIA documents, but the older CIA documents do use the term “Area 51”. The name “Area 51” was indirectly named from the old grid system the Atomic Energy Commission used in the 1950s and 1960s to map the Nevada Test Site and the associated air bases. The original grid system numbering did not go as high as 51, but the Groom Lake area was purchased later and added to the secured perimeter of the base near Area 15 of the original grid; it is speculated that they just reversed 15 to 51 to get the number for the newly annexed area. The area has acquired additional security nicknames used to hide the true nature of the place, such as “Paradise Ranch”, the name that Lockheed Aircraft designer Kelly Johnson used to attract workers to project. According to Alexander Aciman in Time magazine:

Area 51 was cheekily nicknamed Paradise Ranch, so that intelligence officers and government employees wouldn’t have to tell their wives that they were moving the family to a rather large fenced-off area in the desert.

The U-2 spy plane, secretly built by Lockheed and the CIA and tested at Area 51

Other names include the CIA name “Watertown” (a reference to Watertown, New York, birthplace of CIA Director Allen Dulles), and “Dreamland Resort,” “Red Square,” “The Box,” or just “The Ranch”. After the U.S. Air Force took over the base from the CIA in the late 1970s, the name “Area 51” was discontinued, and it was called Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center (or simply Det. 3, AFFTC). As such, it was a remote operating location of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Today the official name of the Groom Lake base appears to be the National Classified Test Facility. The Test Wing (Det. 3, AFFTC) is still the primary occupant of the site.

There is also an Area 52. It is another name for the secret airfield and testing facility near Tonopah, Nevada, about 70 miles (110 km) northwest of Groom Lake. Many of the same aircraft that were developed and tested at Area 51 have their official base of operations at Area 52, especially the stealth aircraft.

For many decades, the activities in the base were top secret, so most of what was written about it was sheer guesswork or based on the reports of people who had worked there and spilled some of their information.

You might remember the crop circle that suddenly appeared 11 miles southeast of Salinas, California on or about December 28, 2013. As usual, every UFOlogist and woomaster went nuts speculating on the deeper meaning of this symbol – especially as it might pertain to the new year and some kind of cataclysmic event or some kind of awakening. (Woomeisters always predict doom and gloom or some kind of awakening. It’s in their handbook.)

According to one “expert”, the Salinas Crop Circle:

«… contains three coded messages according to renowned crop circle researcher, Dr Horace Drew. According to Dr Drew, a retired molecular biologist who worked at Caltech and Australia’s CSIRO, one of the coded messages was to be vigilant about an upcoming astronomical event. The next message referred to a date in the near future when an astronomical event is to occur by July 8, 2014. The third and most startling message was that comet ISON was a space transportation system. Taken in their entirety, the three messages appear to be encouraging people to watch the skies for an upcoming astronomical event featuring remnants of ISON that will in fact be an extraterrestrial event of some kind.» (source)

You have to love it when an appeal to authority (a retired molecular biologist who worked at Caltech and Australia’s CSIRO) goes horribly wrong.

Another crop researcher Paul Jacobs, who began investigating the Salinas crop circle:

«No one in the area has made claim to it and the locals had no knowledge of it or its construction. I estimate it would have taken three men working in daylight conditions doing 9-hour shifts for nearly 9 days to complete this pattern. My gut feeling is we have an important event on our hands here.» (source)

Well Fox Mulder, the truth is not out there. The truth is right here, on earth … the crop circle was created by the aliens at Nvidia.

«In case you’re not a gamer and don’t know what Nvidia is, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara and pioneers visual computing — the art and science of computer graphics. The crop circle was drawn in the shape of Nvidia’s 192-core super chip, called Tegra K1, and the artists said it was challenging to create.

I can’t resist this excellent example of the human capacity for ad-hoc reasoning and pattern recognition. The Salinas Crop Circle was discovered in late December, and instantly became famous in the crop circle world. It is an example of a complex design, that begs to be interpreted.

Crop circle believers – those who think the designs that are often found drawn in various crops around the world (curiously following cultural lines) are the product of aliens trying to communicate in their abstruse way with humans, like to find meaning in the crop circles. This becomes an exercise in pattern recognition, as they are often trying to find meaning where none exists.

Here is one example. The author, assuming the crop circle is an alien communication, comes up with an elaborate interpretation. He believes it refers to comet ISON, which recently burned up on its journey around the sun. This itself is a good example of “retrodicting.” I would be more impressed if a crop circle predicted something yet to be discovered.

The author interprets that middle square section with dots as braille and comes up with the number 192. It turns out, this is a correct interpretation (more below). He writes:

Its first inner code shows a brief message in Braille saying “192-192-2-192-1-192-192”. This may be a symbolic reference to the British search engine “192.com” (see http://www.192.com). Its implication might be that “the blind will see, and those who search will find”

He tells us 192 is a mystical number that comes up frequently in crop circles. He also interprets some damage to the crops as a comet, the circles around the outer edge as either planets or at marketing the numbers on a clock, and:

Its third intermediate code involves a series of alphabetic characters in Morse code. They seem to read: “E-T B I-S-O-N S-T-S One interpretation of this cryptic message might be: “E T B(e)” or “extra-terrestrials exist”. Then “I-S-O-N (comet)” is an “S-T-S (space transportation system)” like for the NASA space shuttles.

What is interesting is how compelling it seems to us when we can find patterns, especially complex ones. We tend to react as if the fact that we can find a pattern means that it is real. We inherently lack an intuitive understanding of the power of data mining. In other words – we fail to appreciate the possible number of patterns that we can see when we use open-ended criteria. There are countless possible patterns, and the fact that we hit upon one or more means nothing – except that we are good at finding patterns and connections.

The Reveal

This is one of those uncommon cases where we have a definitive answer in the end, which is what makes it such a powerful example. The crop circle was actually commissioned by NVIDIA as a promotional stunt for their new mobile graphics chip. Here is a video of the making of the crop circle:

True believers might try to deny this evidence by saying it occurred after the fact as a distraction, but that is simply not possible. There would not have been time to fake this video, and to come up with an alternate interpretation of the design that so clearly matches NVIDIA’s new chip.

For example, the 192 in braille is accurate, but the 192 refers to the number of processors in the chip. There is a reason why 192 might crop up frequently in the context of computers – because it is 64 x 3, and 64 is a multiple of 8. Because of how computers are built, you will notice that from kilobytes to terabytes, hard drives, flash drives, RAM, etc. all come in such multiples – 64, 128, 256, 512, etc.

It’s interesting that crop circle believers have come to believe that the gray aliens like to communicate in braille. Apparently, so do human crop circle artists.

Watch the video for the full explanation of the meaning in the crop circle. And then see how clever people can be in coming up with alternate interpretations. I guess this is a post-modern approach to crop circles as a narrative form.

On that point – also pay attention to the words of the crop circle artists interviewed in the NVIDIA video. They say, essentially, that part of their art form is creating the crop circles in the context of mystery. It is a collaboration with the crop circle believers, who provide the “other worldly” context and interpretation of their art.

Another artist also says that complex mathematical designs, the ones that look as if they have really complex relationships, are actually the easiest to lay out and create.

This always reminds me of my personal encounter with a crop circle believer who challenged me by saying, “how can they create perfect circles? That’s impossible.” I then introduced her to the concept of a compass, the crop circle equivalent of which is a stake and a rope.

Simple techniques can create mathematical perfection and complexity. That is sort-of the nature of math and geometry, which is all about relationships. These relationships create countless patterns, and believers can plumb the depths of those patterns to their endless satisfaction.

Whenever Australia comes up in a conversation, we usually remember to mention how absurdly dangerous the place seems to be. We talk about its diverse, dangerous fauna, and the harsh, unforgiving climate. However, what we often forget is that the continent also has a rich history of creepy myths and ghost stories. From UFO sightings to government secrets and frightening urban legends, Australia can scare you in almost as many ways as its animals can maim you.

Let’s take a look at some of the stranger stories from the “most dangerous country in the world.”

The legend of farmer Frederick Fisher is one of the most popular ghost stories in Australia. On a calm June evening in 1826, Fisher left his house in Campbelltown to run some errands, never to return. He was gone without a trace, leaving no clues that could explain his sudden disappearance.

Four months after Fisher vanished, a local resident stumbled into a Campbelltown hotel, pale and shaken to his very bones. He told the assorted audience that he had just encountered the ghost of Frederick Fisher. The spectral farmer had been sitting on a fence by the road, pointing with his finger at a paddock near the river that ran nearby. Then, the startled man watched the apparition fade away in front of his eyes.

The man who had seen the ghost was a wealthy and well-respected member of the community, so the police decided to investigate the paddock the ghost had pointed at. To their shock, they found the body of Frederick Fisher, dead and hidden from view. His murderer was soon found to be one George Worrall, Fisher’s neighbor and friend who had been taking care of his legal matters in the past. Worrall had already raised some eyebrows after Fisher’s disappearance, as he told everyone that Fisher had sailed to England and soon started selling the poor farmer’s belongings. The emergence of the body soon caused Worrall to confess, and Fisher could finally rest in peace.

Or could he? Some sources say that Fisher quite liked being a ghost . . . to the point that he still haunts the hotel mentioned in the legend today.

Wycliffe Well is a roadhouse and holiday park near Wauchope in the Northern Territories. The area is said to be one of the biggest hotspots for UFO activity in the entire continent. There have been many reported sightings in recent decades by locals and visitors alike, and this has made the relatively remote location surprisingly popular among UFO enthusiasts and the occasional tourist.

Why do UFOs congregate in Wycliffe Well? Nobody knows for sure. Some say the place lies at an intersection of two major LEY lines, which attract alien vessels and cause them to pass the place quite often. Others maintain the mysterious sightings are actually secret experiments by the Pine Gap US military base, which, according to some theories, is Australia’s answer to Area 51. Others still say the UFOs, if stories of them are true at all, are merely the desert sun’s reflection on birds and other tricks of light.

Whatever the truth may be, the roadhouse—stuffed to the brim with alien kitsch and UFO memorabilia—certainly benefits from the rumors.

8 • The House Of Miracles

In the suburbs of Sydney, there is a small house where miracles are said to happen. In 2006, three months after their 17-year-old son died in a car accident, George and Lina Tannous were shocked to notice that the walls of the deceased boy’s room were mysteriously weeping aromatic oil. They soon became convinced that the oil was of supernatural origin, sent by their son from heaven to communicate with them.

As news of the mysterious “House of Miracles” started spreading, its fame grew and the faithful came knocking at the Tannous family’s door. They even noticed that the oil, combined with prayer, seemed to have healing properties. Pilgrims kept on coming, so the Tannous turned their house into a 24-hour chapel. A local Catholic priest became convinced that the phenomenon was clearly a miracle, and even started anointing people with the oil. Even Mr. Tannous’ trouble with the law in 2010 (curiously, he had been involved in a forgery case) didn’t stop people from coming.

The miracle oil, which was tested in 2007 and found to be a combination of oil and water, is still on the walls of the house today, and its true origins remain a mystery. The Tannous maintain its origin is divine, but although they have always refused to take any money from visitors, the president of the local sceptics’ association has his own suspicions about the mystery substance’s authenticity: He says the House of Miracles looks a lot like someone had been, and we quote, “running around the house dabbing oil and water on the walls.”

Since their discovery in the 1970s, this set of 300 pictures has achieved widespread notoriety due to their resemblance of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. What’s more, the area also seems to have a large, labyrinthine structure of strangely straight caves and tunnels underneath the stone. Does this mean that ancient Egyptians somehow managed to travel to Eastern Australia, and brought their rock-working tools along for the ride? How did they manage that? Was it magic? Were they helped by aliens?

It depends on who you ask. Steven Strong, the leader of a group of amateur archeologists researching the area, says that the amount of existing evidence (along with a second series of glyphs that his team has recently found) means the area still clearly has many strange mysteries to hide. Meanwhile, Egyptology expert Boyo Ockinga, from Sydney’s Macquarie University, has stated that the site has nothing to do with Egyptians. According to him, the glyphs are poor imitations that were most likely made by Australian soldiers who visited Egypt during World War I and developed a fascination with the culture.

The small, rural town of Picton is located 80 kilometers (50 mi) southwest of Sydney. It’s a quaint little township, full of small-town charm and named after one of the generals at the Battle of Waterloo. It’s so quaint, in fact, that many of its residents choose to stay even after life has left them. Picton is said to be crawling with ghosts, from strange, spectral ladies that move shopkeepers’ signs around to invisible swimmers by the railway viaduct. The maternity hospital is haunted by ghostly, crying babies and an evil matron who attempts to strangle people at night. The Imperial Hotel’s jukebox sometimes starts to play by itself, even if it isn’t plugged in.

Some of the more well-known of Picton’s ghosts are the children who haunt the (surprise, surprise) cemetery. Two ghostly kids, a boy and a girl, apparently stalk the burial grounds dressed in old-fashioned clothes, disappearing behind the headstones and appearing in photographs of the otherwise empty cemetery.

The most famous of Picton’s specters, however, lurks in the Mushroom Tunnel, an abandoned railway tunnel that is thought to be haunted by the ghost of Emily Bollard, a woman who was taking a shortcut through the tunnel in 1916—only to be greeted by an oncoming train. The locomotive struck her and carried her mangled corpse in its cowcatcher all the way to the town’s railway station. According to legend, you can still encounter her ghost in the tunnel, forever trying to run from her oncoming doom.

I generally don’t delve into the whole UFO thing because, quite frankly, i consider these videos a complete waste of time. But sometimes, the stupid value just outweighs the eye roll value.

Be sure to listen to the guy filming the object. This is great stuff. Oh … and make sure you don’t have any sharp objects in your hand as you watch this, otherwise this facepalm is going to be very painful.

Filmed this from my deck at 1:30 pm on Dec 10, 2013. I spotted the object high above the telephone wires. Once zoomed in I could see it was changing shape rapidly while moving thru the sky. It seemed to construct then deconstruct itself repeatedly in routine. At 0:48 and 1:36 the object changes shape very clearly. I filmed this with a telephoto lens and extender reaching up to 800mm. Slow motion and digital zoom applied.

And yet, as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl points out, millions of Americans hold these beliefs. In a Zogby poll taken six years ago, only 64 percent of U.S. adults agreed that the attacks “caught US intelligence and military forces off guard.” More than 30 percent chose a different conclusion: that “certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military, and economic motives,” or that these government elements “actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks.”

How can this be? How can so many people, in the name of skepticism, promote so many absurdities?

The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.

Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness. But the prevalence of such belief, documented in surveys, has forced scholars to take it more seriously. Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you’d expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it’s not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking.

A young pilot who disappeared in 1978 might have been having a little fun, Spielberg style.

Today we’re going back to 1978, when a young private pilot named Frederick Valentich rented a single-engine Cessna and literally flew off into the sunset, never to be seen again. Sadly there’s nothing unusual about that; the fact is that small planes crash every so often. But something was different this time. The case of Frederick Valentich has been called Australia’s most famous aviation mystery; not because he disappeared, but because his final radio transmissions reported a UFO. Ever since, a subculture of Australians, notably including Valentich’s own father, believed he was abducted by aliens and may yet be alive somewhere.

Valentich and his aircraft

The Australian Department of Transport’s official accident investigation summary report gives a single line: The reason for the disappearance of the aircraft has not been determined. And that’s all; a sparse epitaph for a young man’s tragedy.

Frederick was only 20 years old, a member of the Air Training Corps, a volunteer youth cadet program sponsored by the Royal Australian Air Force. He’d had his private pilot’s license for a little over a year, and had a corresponding amount of flight experience. He lived with his parents, and by all accounts was a fine young man with no serious problems and was happily pursuing his career of choice. One day in October 1978, he showed up at Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne to rent a plane in order to fly out to King Island, a round trip of some 560 kilometers, about three and a half hours worth of flight time. He was turned away due to bad weather over the ocean. So he returned a few days later to try again, and this time got his plane, a single-engine Cessna 182L.

An artist’s conception of Valentich pursued by a UFO

He took off at about a quarter after 6pm in the evening of October 21, for what would be his first (and only) night flight over water. The weather was clear. King Island is about halfway between Australia and Tasmania. To fly there from Melbourne, you typically don’t fly a straight line, because that would mean you’re over water nearly the entire way; and flying over water is, of course, riskier than flying over land. So pilots typically go from Melbourne, southwest along the coast, to Cape Otway, which is the closest point on the mainland to King Island. This longer route is mostly over land. However even this safest route includes a stretch of 85 straight kilometers over water.

Frederick’s flight proceeded uneventfully. About twenty minutes after sunset, he turned away from the coast at an altitude of 4500 feet and began the long stretch over water. It was at that moment when he made his first radio call. Recordings of the actual radio conversation do exist; but for whatever reason, there aren’t any publicly available copies, and documentary films of the disappearance have always made dramatizations from the printed transcripts, which are available.

Valentich: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below five thousand?

Melbourne: Delta Sierra Juliet, no known traffic.

Valentich: Delta Sierra Juliet, I am, seems to be, a large aircraft below five thousand.

Melbourne: Delta Sierra Juliet, what type of aircraft is it?

Valentich: Delta Sierra Juliet, I cannot affirm, it is four bright, it seems to me, like landing lights.

Melbourne: Delta Sierra Juliet.

Valentich: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet, the aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above.

The conversation continued this way for some five minutes:

Valentich: Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne. It seems like it’s stationary. What I’m doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me. Also it’s got a green light and sort of metallic, like it’s all shiny on the outside.

These make for light-hearted posts, but occasionally it’s fun to deconstruct viral videos purporting to show something fantastical on the internet. Most such videos are one of the big three – ghosts, UFOs or Bigfoot (or some other cryptozoological creature).

Obviously the prior-probability here is vanishingly small, and so it would take a very compelling video to have any chance of being taken seriously, and this video does not come close. Before I take a close look at the video itself, let’s explore the plausibility of the claim.

Dragons are gigantic flying predators, at least in their current Western cultural image. Such creatures if they existed would be voracious. Flying is a high-energy activity and animals pay for the benefits of flight by needing to eat incredible amounts of calories. Bald eagles, for example, eat about 10% of their body weight per day. If we extrapolate that to a dragon, even if light for its size so it can fly, would require hundreds of pounds of food per day.

Each dragon would require a large hunting territory. If there is even a minimal breeding population of dragons, they would frequently be seen in the skies hunting for prey or carrion. Saying they live underground or are stealthy hunters, first is an argument from ignorance to explain a lack of evidence. Further, it is not plausible such creatures could survive under ground (and why would they fly), and you can only be so stealthy when you are that size.

There are also the usual objective to cryptozoological creatures – why are there no specimens of such creatures, no bones, no carcasses, no nests, scat, or remains of their eating? We can invent a special reason why each bit of evidence is lacking, but Occam favors the conclusion that these creatures just don’t exist.

We also have the historical record of dragons, meaning their existence in culture, as a guide. We can clearly see the image of dragons evolve over time, going in different directions in different cultures. Real creatures have a more stable representation in art over time – the artistic style may evolve, but a lion is always a lion. (Here, of course, I am talking about historical time frames of hundreds of years, not evolutionary time scales.)

The Video

It is reasonable to conclude from existing evidence that dragons probably do not exist (as cool as it would be if they did), but let’s take a look at the video with an open, but critical, mind.

Conspiracy theories are an unfortunate, paranoid and counterfactual outgrowth of any national tragedy. But in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Navy Yard, so-called “truthers” found some hard proof that something was off: The attack happened on Sept. 16, but both ABC.com and British Columbia’s Kelowna Daily Courier published stories dated the day before.

Thousands of people, including some of the Internet’s most popular conspiracy theorists, seized on the time stamps as evidence of a vast government conspiracy to orchestrate tragedies and clamp down on gun rights in the aftermath. They have other “proof” too, of course — conjecture about “crisis actors” and John Wilkes Booth and the two rumored shooters who didn’t end up being part of Aaron Alexis’s plot. But the time stamp issue is the foundation of many of the more popular videos circulating on YouTube, Facebook and that seedy corner of the Internet where people debate the Illuminati and UFOs.

“Now we have what might be the best smoking gun evidence yet, and it is time-stamped from September 15,” rails the popular conspiracy vlogger Dahboo77 in a YouTube video that has been viewed more than 90,000 times. “These guys must have put this into the system right before midnight, right before they left the office, on the 15th. And they knew it” — “it” being the Navy Yard rampage, hours before it happened.

The reality is, of course, a little more mundane: Both sites incorrectly ingested a feed from the Associated Press, which caused their AP stories to display the wrong time stamps.

I will do my best to make the occasional post, but just in case i’m a little less attentive than usual or a little slower with the posts, you’ll know why. I wouldn’t want you to think i was abducted by aliens or anything.😉

I’ll be back in action right about September 22nd!!!!

In the mean time, check out the iLLumiNuTTi facebook page from time to time. Even though i’ll be away from my computer, we have other contributors posting over at facebook to pick up some of the slack.

Millions of people on this planet claim to have been abducted by aliens. About two hundred of them (alleged abductees, that is) will converge on Portland this weekend, for the second annual Experiencers Speak conference, organized by and for people who say they’ve been kidnapped by — or had close encounters with — extraterrestrials.

Among those who plan to attend the two-day symposium are Travis Walton, the logger whose UFO experience was portrayed in the 1993 film Fire in the Sky; Jim Weiner, one of four young men who saw a UFO and “lost time” (presumably due to abduction) during a 1976 camping trip in Allagash, Maine; and Kathleen Marden, director of abduction research for the Mutual UFO Network, a national organization dedicated to researching UFO sightings. Marden is also the niece of Betty and Barney Hill, the New Hampshire couple who claimed to have been seized by aliens in September 1961 near Franconia Notch. Many more will come to share their own stories, and be validated by others; last year’s Experiencers Speak event in Gorham attracted about 150 attendees.

“People really need to talk about it and realize that they’re not alone,” says Audrey Hewins of Mechanic Falls, the lead organizer of the conference and founder of Starborn Support, a group that exists to help those who say they’ve met ETs. “We like to get them to a point where they accept who they are and are able to function in society.”

Hewins, 40, describes herself as a “lifelong abductee,” who, along with her identical twin sister, has “been taken [repeatedly] since early childhood.” After years of trying to repress the memories (she calls it “stuffing”) she and her sister reached out to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), and a representative from that organization put both sisters under hypnosis (separately), helping them to access often-traumatizing memories of visits from “beings” with big, motionless, almond-shaped eyes and bald heads. Over time, through hypnosis, Hewins began to recall experiences of being paralyzed, lifted, and brought onto a spacecraft — all at extraterrestrial hands.

Although Hewins likens “Post-Abduction Syndrome” (PAS) to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), her interactions with the otherworldly beings weren’t always hostile; in fact, it was one of them that suggested she launch Starborn Support in 2006. Today, there are chapters in 10 states along the east coast, along with a Starborn streaming radio program.

“This isn’t something you can tell your family members without having them question you,” says Kathleen Marden, of MUFON, who co-coordinates a peer-facilitated support group for experiencers in Florida. “Some people receive very negative feedback” from loved ones such as ridicule or ostracization (not to mention lay diagnosis of “totally insane”).

A few months back, a British anomaly investigation organization announced the possible death of UFOlogy. They admitted that failure to provide proof that UFOs were extraterrestrial craft and a decline in the number of UFO reports suggests that aliens do not exist after all. Was this the end of “UFOlogy”—the study of UFOs? “No way! It’s alive and well here,” said the U.S. UFOlogists. So it is. But what is the real status of the study of UFOs?

The UFO research field is having a bit of a crisis these days. Reports come in by the hundreds. There are not enough people to investigate them. Yet, decades of UFO research by private and military organizations have resulted in disappointment for those who surely thought there was something out there to reveal. Many of the historic figures of UFOlogy are aging or have passed away. Who is doing the work now? And what exactly are they doing?

The major organization remaining in the U.S. for investigating UFO sightings is MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. MUFON is not in good shape. Their stated mission is to conduct scientific investigation of UFO reports for the benefit of mankind. But there is dispute about their ability to actually do that. The current version of MUFON, according to those observing the situation, is focused on everything except proper UFO investigation and is nowhere near scientific. Membership in the organization has fallen off and some local MUFON groups are disgruntled. Leadership upheavals over the past few years may have been distracting and overall, they are experiencing a serious case of mission creep.

MUFON consists of chapters covering each state across the country who operate somewhat independently with members paying dues to the main headquarters. They promote a scientific method. But do they actually accomplish that goal? Recent commentators say no, they do not. The focus in local MUFON chapters meetings these days is decidedly unscientific with talks on alien abduction, conspiracy theories, human-ET hybrids, hypnotic regression, and repressed memories. That’s a wide range of pseudoscience in one place. It’s dragging down the credibility of the entire subject as well as missing the point of improving actual UFO investigations.

A new report by the Central Intelligence Agency has revealed that more than half of the unidentified flying objects (UFOs) so frequently seen in the sky in the late 1950s and 1960s were in fact US spy planes.

“There’s no question that a lot of the sightings that take place are in fact our own aircraft, secret military projects or whatever it happens to be,” executive director of the Mutual UFO NetworkDavid MacDonald said.

“Whether or not 50 percent can be attributed to one or two aircraft, I don’t know if I could go along with that or not just because of the diversity of what people were seeing,” he added.

The recent declassified CIA report came days after the spy agency acknowledged the existence of the mysterious Area 51, a US airbase rumored to house UFOs.

The site in central Nevada, about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, was used for testing the U-2 spy plane. It was chosen for the U-2 program after an aerial survey was conducted by CIA and Air Force staff.

“After World War II people became increasingly concerned,” said Jeffrey Underwood, a National Museum of the US Air Force historian. “They saw things in the air and they didn’t know what they were.”

Underwood added that other UFO sightings turned out to be surveillance balloons high in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The U-2, which is capable of flying above 70,000 feet and was often spotted high above airliners in the 1950s, was one of those strange craft. The SR-71 Blackbird flew above 80,000 feet, according to the report.

“High altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect – a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs),” the report said.

The mistake was made because all commercial planes flew at 10,000 to 20,000 feet, and it was not believed that an aircraft could fly as high as the U-2 and SR-71 did.

“Air Force investigators then attempted to explain such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena,” the CIA document said.

Early yesterday morning, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy was peering through a window aboard the International Space Station when he spotted something strange and unidentifiable coursing through space alongside the orbital outpost.

When he couldn’t discern for himself what the mysterious object was, Cassidy phoned home to mission control. At first, they didn’t know either, but NASA reported later that day that they’d sussed it out.

“Earlier this morning (Aug. 19), Chris Cassidy had noted an object that was floating past the station near the station’s Progress 52 cargo ship,” said the NASA TV narrator. “That object has been identified by Russianflight controllers as an antenna cover from the Zvezda service module.”

Unusual displays of lights were reported in both cities on Saturday night, giving rise to UFO chatter.

According to one eyewitness, identified as Cbazz on YouTube: “My family and I witnessed these strange amber lights in Tucson on our way home from dinner. There were seven or eight of them crossing the sky, some solo and others in pairs flying very, very close together.

Watch the UFOs videotaped over Tucson.

“Living in this part of the country, we often hear fighter jets from the Air Force base, but we are used to that and it is always recognizable and very loud,” Cbazz wrote.

“These objects we saw tonight were silent and moving across the sky very fast….Not sure what we were seeing, but I never really believed in this sort of thing until tonight. Glad I had my phone to record.”

Several eyewitnesses saw and videotaped similar objects in the sky — but this time, they were flying over Kansas City, Mo.

Watch the Kansas City UFOs here.

“Not for sure what they are, but I got several videos of them and pics. Looks like a UFO fleet!?” wrote YouTube poster jemnich1, who was contacted by another witness, GoGraveside, who sent this message on YouTube: “I really hope you get to investigate this incident. I was in the same vicinity and recorded the same lights on my cell phone. There were 3 additional passengers in my vehicle at the time who witnessed the ‘lights’ as well.”

So, what were these folks looking at from different parts of the country? Or does it just get buried in those numerous reports that are never adequately explained?

Nearly everyone who’s looked up at the night sky has asked him or herself at least some form of the very same question: Are we really, truly alone in the universe? The only thing that’s certain is that we definitely don’t want to be. Maybe that explains why we keep seeing UFOs in the sky… and why they’re always one of three types.

The idea that humankind is pretty much the end all be all as far as intelligent life goes is a pretty depressing thought. It’s only natural, then, that we’d grasp on to pretty much anything as a sign of alien contact—seriously, anything. History is rife with reports of UFO sightings, but if you take a second to stop and think, nearly all of them come with perfectly reasonable explanations—and not one of them extraterrestrial.

Consider this: It would take one of our space ships 60,000 years simply to reach the edge of our galaxy alone. Now, that doesn’t bode well for an extraterrestrial playdate. But this hasn’t deterred the hoards of people willing to swear until their dying day that they have seen, interacted with, touched, and/or been probed (anally or otherwise) by creatures of a world beyond our own. And sure, the thought that we’re not alone is an exciting if not slightly unsettling one, but these little claims and subsequent “proofs” of alien life on Earth almost always fall into one of three categories: military exercises gone wrong, acts of nature, and of course, man-made hoaxes.

• Military

Ever notice how UFO sightings tend to conveniently happen on or around military bases? Yeah, that’s not a coincidence. Be it weather balloon, aerial spy cam, or rogue aircraft, people are more than happy to assume that the mystery circling overhead is alien—rather than military-made—especially during times of national paranoia.

The Battle of Los Angeles

Times of paranoia like, say, WWII, for instance. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the country’s sense of security was shattered. So three months later, when a weather balloon went casually wafting over Los Angeles in 1942, hysteria naturally followed suit. What’s a terrified city to do? Why, conduct a massive military airstrike against the interloper, of course—resulting in this iconic photograph of what was later dubbed The Battle of Los Angeles.

Initially the shadow in the sky was thought to be another attack coming over from Japan, but at a press conference shortly after the incident, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox quickly put that rumor to rest, calling it a “false alarm.” Which then left media personnel free to publish all sorts of “reports” of extraterrestrial coverup. And remember—after WWII, people were shaken. They were ready to believe anything.

The Battle of Los Angeles acclimated civilians to the notion that alien sightings were not only plausible but likely. It allowed for a more comfortable way to explain away their fears, and the instances only picked up speed.

One of the most notorious alleged UFO sightings (and the inspiration for a criminally underrated television show), Roswell, all started in July of 1947 when local ranch foreman William Brazel stumbled upon a giant ditch hundreds of feet long and filled with debris—namely rubber strips, tin foil, paper, scotch tape, and toughened sticks.

Since the bizarre mess was on the property where he worked, Brazel promptly reported it to the authorities, and the account eventually made its way over to the Roswell Army Airfield base. The base’s commander denounced the mess to be nothing more than a weather balloon gone wrong, encouraging everyone to forget about the mini-dump and go about their business. So of course, conspiracy theorists decided it was the perfect time for a good, ol’ fashioned UFO rabble-rousing.

Stanton Friedman, a physicist and amateur ufologist (it’s a word), was one of those noble crusaders for the alien origins explanation—it’s just that he decided to wait a good 30 years before weighing in because, well, no one really knows why. After interviewing Major Jesse Marcel—one of the site’s original inspectors—in 1978, Friedman got what he was looking for. Marcel claimed that the entire event was a military coverup of an alien spaceship. Bingo!

Glenn Dennis, a mortician, also piped in (another 11 years after that) and claimed that dead bodies had been removed from the site and taken to an airbase. But apparently, these people weren’t totally insane (or at the very least, totally wrong).

Because there was so much controversy over what actually happened, two separate official government investigations took place—one in 1994 and the other in 1995. The first confirmed that the cause had indeed been a weather balloon; the military was testing them in a classified program that used sensitive lights to try to detect Russian nuclear tests. The second cleared up that whole “dead bodies” issue; the test had used dummies during parachute testing, dummies which then had to be removed.

After Roswell, interest in potential alien spacecrafts skyrocketed, with almost 800 sightings occurring in the weeks that directly followed. As with the Battle of Los Angeles, the international climate probably played a role; this was mid-Cold War, when Americans were well-primed for a little extra paranoia and perpetual fear. While photographs of UFOs are now are relatively rare and met with considerable skepticism, back then, the claims were accepted in droves. Each UFO sighting was merely another log tossed on top of an already hefty pile of anxiety-inducing fodder.

In August and September of 1951, the small town of Lubbock, Texas enjoyed its own brief stint in the UFO spotlight. The Texas Technical College professors spotted a group of 20-30 some-odd lights floating overhead the night of August 25. The next week, student Carl Hart noticed a similar phenomenon in the sky and snapped photos, which the local newspaper then published and eventually sent nationwide.

Lieutenant Edward Ruppelt from the Air Force’s Project Blue Book (the government agency set up for the express purpose of UFO investigations) analyzed the images and ultimately declared them not to be a hoax—but he didn’t believe them to be of alien origin, either. Rather Ruppelt believed that the vision had been nothing more than streetlights being reflected off the underbellies of a flock of plovers. Witnesses in the area supported this explanation, agreeing that they had in fact seen large flocks of migratory birds and had even her some squawking.

Still, others maintained that the lieutenant was simply attempting to cover up the training exercises of the Air Port’s new flying wing. Whichever the correct explanation might be, however, certainly doesn’t include aliens.

• Acts of Nature

Pink UFO: A stack of altocumulus lenticularis clouds hovers over the Alpujarra Mountains in southern Spain, stained by the rays of the setting sunPicture: IAN DENNIS

These little alien scares down’t necessarily have to come from the hand of man, though. Our world is fully capable of creating its own absolutely beautiful, stunning phenomenons that can pretty easily terrify any witnesses who don’t understand what’s going on in the sky above them. Generally, as science advances, we have fewer and fewer instances of people reporting suspicious, potentially otherworldly activity in the wake of a natural occurrence. Still, it’s curious how quick we are to jump to the conclusion that a phenomenal vision came from some alien being when, in fact, it just came from our very own phenomenal world.

Portugal’s Miracle of the Sun

In 1917, 30,000 people in Fatima, Portugal supposedly witnessed the “Miracle of the Sun,” an event that was supposed to predict the appearance of the Virgin Mary. Crowds gathered to find themselves staring at a cloudy sky for hours. But when the clouds finally did part and the sun came bearing down, everybody simultaneously experienced radiating, multicolored lights that came spiraling downwards. And cue collective panic… now.

Understandably, though, and to this clearly devoutly religious population, the bright, shiny lights could very well have seemed like a sign of the End Times. Nearly 100 years later, we’re aware of the fact that staring at the sun for such a long of a period of time has the potential to directly induce mass hysteria and hallucinations. But hey, they were looking for a little excitement; at least they got what they came for. The severe retina damage was just a bonus.

UFO. It’s a term and phenomenon that’s been around with the public for decades now and has basically the main name used when someone claims they have seen an alien spaceship.

While there are many things that I have noticed about UFOs, I’ve narrowed it down to five things.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about UFOs:

5. People use that term in contrast what it really means.

I’m sure that most people know that “UFO” means Unidentified Flying Object, but most of the time now when someone uses the term UFO they don’t actually use it to describe an object in the air that they can not identify at the moment, instead it now means to most people that when a person says that they are seeing a UFO that they mean to say that they are seeing what they believe is an alien spaceship.

Even if it turns out a UFO is really a alien spacecraft, then the term UFO can not be applied anymore because the Unidentified Flying Object has in fact been identified.

4. People take horrible pictures and videos of them.

Most photos and videos of UFOs tend to be pretty bad. Many of them are blurry and don’t really give much details. Some of them just look like balls of light or some other featureless object in the sky that could really be just something simple like a balloon (and yes, balloons do get misidentified as UFOs).

While there are some good photos and videos of UFOs out there that are pretty detailed, there’s just one little problem with most of them…

3. The good ones are faked.

There are good, detailed photos and videos of UFOs out there that can be easily found on the internet. The one problem that all these very highly detailed photos and videos have is that they are always found out to be fakes.

UFO photos and videos have been being faked for decades now, be it either using built from scratch models used from the 1950’s on up til today, to digitally altered photos and videos that have been being made since the 1990’s.

People will probably continue to make these fake UFO photos and videos because they tend to get people attention, while skeptics will continue to debunk them.

Stories of alien abductions are found across the world. Yet according to mainstream science, there’s no evidence to prove these outlandish claims. Tune in to learn more about the controversy surrounding stories of alien abductions.

Okay. Maybe it’s just me. But does this “UFO” look strikingly similar to a bundle of balloons? – Mason I. Bilderberg

A New York family walking through Flushing, Queens, reported watching and photographing a “strange organic-type UFO with appendages” about 5:40 p.m. on June 5, 2013, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

“The object was hovering in the south direction,” the reporting witness stated. “Luckily I had brought my new camera to record the school production. This occurred at about 5:40 p.m. We stood and watched it periodically and noticed it hadn’t moved at all. It just floated there at a very high altitude.”

When the family reached the school, they pointed out the object in the sky to other people.

“There were over 30 people all outside waiting to be let into the school. Quickly, all eyes were turned to the skies. Many met what they were seeing with confusion, keen interest and some skepticism. Soon, even the skeptics were unsure what they were seeing with their own two eyes.”

The witness described the object.

“The object was still hovering and unmoved – still giving off some kind of odd glow. After four more attempts with the camera, I finally managed to get it. It didn’t take long for all those who witnessed what I’d seen to be convinced, whether they believe in ETs or not, that this was simply not something man-made, but rather some kind of organic life form.”

When the concert was over about an hour later, the object was gone.
[END]

UFOs, and what they are, have been a subject of debate throughout the world for decades now.

For those who are apart of the UFO community, UFOs are usually considered to be extra-terrestrial spacecraft. For skeptics however most UFOs can be easily explained as either being some type of natural weather or astronomical phenomenon, a mis-identification of a man made object, or a hoax.

Beside the most obvious explanations for what UFOs are, there are a few not so obvious (or in some cases, accepted) explanations for what UFOs really are:

8. Extra-dimensional

Probably one of the far most common alternative UFO explanations is that UFOs (and the alleged beings operating them) are actually from other universes, rather than other planets.

This explanation has become so common among UFO believers that many believers actually try to determine if a UFO in a photo or video is of either extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional origin (rather than of natural or man made origin).7. Time travelers

Another explanation for the origin of UFOs is that they are from Earth, just far, far into the future. Just how far exactly is often debated amongst the UFO believers who believe this theory.

Some people believe that they’re from a few hundred years into the future. Some people believe that they’re from several millions of years into the future. Some people even believe that they’re just from a few decades into the future.

6. Angels and Demons

Probably one of the more popular explanations amongst devout and fundamentalist Christians (especially those who don’t believe in even the possibility of extra-terrestrial life existing elsewhere in the universe) is that UFOs are either angels sent by God, or (more commonly) demons sent by Satan.

While this explanation is far more accepted with devout and fundamentalist Christians (at least those who actually believe in UFOs to begin with) most UFO believers (and skeptics for that matter) do not.

5. Secret and experimental military aircraft

One of the more common explanations for UFOs amongst both skeptics and UFO believers is that many UFOs are actually secret and experimental military aircraft.

The reason why this is accepted among skeptics as well as UFO believers is because several different kinds military aircraft, back when they were still secret and/or experimental, were thought to be UFOs (i.e. F-117, B-2) and that sometimes the government even used the UFO phenomenon as a cover to help keep certain aircraft secret for years (like with the SR-71).

While skeptics and UFO believers do accept that some UFOs are most likely secret and experimental aircraft, many UFO believers also believe that these aircraft are far more technologically advance than what anyone believes is currently possible, and that the technology being used in them is of extra-terrestrial origin.

Whether you are a believer or not, it is a fact that Unidentified Objects or Anomalous Aerial Phenomena, are seen and have been seen since ancient times in the earth’s atmosphere. When it comes to sightings of UFO’s, pilots and other aviation professionals are partial to using less stigma-inducing words like “balloon, unknown traffic, unidentified object, traffic, or unknown aircraft” when they are interviewed after having seen something odd during a flight. The most mysterious and thought provoking UFO sightings, are those not only witnessed by several people, but also confirmed by radar. These accounts can never fully be explained and they continue to be real for all the witnesses involved.

10 • 1952 Washington Sightings – USA

From 12 to 29 July 1952, a series of sightings took place in Washington. One of the most publicized events took place on the 19th. On that evening, an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport detected seven unidentified objects on his radar screen. His superior immediately verified that the instrumentation wasn’t faulty. Moments later a controller at another facility also confirmed the objects, but he also saw “a bright orange light”, while yet another controller confirmed an orange disc hovering above the airport. At that point the radarscope lit up with even more objects and the controllers phoned Andrews Air Force Base. Tracked by the air force as well as the other radar centers fighter jets was scrambled. Some fighters reported that they saw “white glows” or lights (one even engaged them) while others reported nothing unusual. The Air Force’s “false radar readings caused by a temperature inversion” excuse failed to impress as the objects were also seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses and as such, speculation continues to this day.

9 • Campeche Sighting – Mexico 2004

In March 2004, the crew of a military surveillance plane busy with a routine anti-drug trafficking surveillance flight caught sight of three unidentified objects on their radar. As they couldn’t see anything with the naked eye in the area where the objects were supposed to be, they turned on their infra-red camera to track them. For the next 30 minutes, they recorded 11 unidentified objects moving through the sky at a very high pace. One of the objects also seemed to divide or separate into two different objects. After chasing them, there were a few tense moments when the radar confirmed the objects had surrounded them. In a completely uncharacteristic move, the Mexican government released all the details of the event and they provided the crew, footage and the Head of the Mexican Air Force for examination and questioning by the world’s media.

In 1952, Flight Sergeant Roland Hughes was returning to his base from a training mission when a “gleaming silver, metallic disc” started following him. The Sergeant later described the disc to be shiny, highly reflective and about the size of a Lancaster bomber. The disc descended towards him and even traveled alongside him before it sped off at an incredible speed. The object was caught by the RAF radars; the controllers confirmed that the object traveled at speeds impossible for any of the aircraft of the time. Six days later, Hughes was sent to West Germany to give his official account of what happened to senior RAF officers and the aviation Minister. The minister was so convinced, that he briefed civil servants on the matter. After the sighting, Hughes was nicknamed “Saucer Sam” and his colleagues decorated his jet with a painted flying saucer. According to his family, Hughes never spoke about the incident unless he was asked to do so.

7 • The Washington, D.C. Jet Chase – 2002

In an incident that is awash with conspiracy theories; NORAD and the Air National Guard picked up an unknown object that entered Washington’s restricted flying zone on 26 July 2002. As the object’s track caused concern, F-16’s were scrambled to intercept the object but the pilots claimed that they saw nothing when they arrived on the scene—the object also disappeared from radar. At the same time in Maryland several witnesses saw a fast-moving bright blue light in the sky; the witnesses also said they saw jets pursuing it at high speed. According to NORAD, that was all that transpired and they view the matter as closed. But, according to the witnesses more than 2 jets were in the air which indicated that the scramble was unique; one dipped its wings on approach as if to communicate with the unknown object and they also claim that the jets trailed the unknown object but the object flew too fast for the jets to keep up. The event featured on FOX news as well as the Washington Post.

On the evening of May 25, 1995 America West Flight 564 was flying at an altitude of about 39,000 ft close to Bovina, Texas. While observing lightning outside the plane, the attendant noticed a peculiar set of flickering lights a little bit below the 757. The First Officer was alerted to the phenomena, he immediately saw the lights which he described as eight bright blue strobes. As the rest of the flight crew watched the flashing lights, they could discern the object as being cigar-shaped. The pilots estimated it to be between 300 and 400 ft long. The object could not be seen on the FAA’s radar. The following day the controllers checked with NORAD and discovered that they tracked an unknown object the previous evening that appeared to be stationary, but would accelerate and stop time and time again at high speeds. These quick sprints were estimated between 1,000 and 1,400 mph. The object was also seen by a US Air Force pilot manning an EF 111A. To date, the incident remains unsolved.

I’m taking a step beyond sciencey with the following topic. What happens when science doesn’t cooperate with your subject area? Researchers of unexplained events may get frustrated and disenchanted with the scientific process when the eyewitness accounts they collect are too weird to explain via conventional means. They go unconventional.

Captain Jean-Baptiste Duhamel led the hunt for a beast that was attacking and devouring victims in the Gevaudan, France, in 1794. He had a problem. He could not catch and kill the man-eating monster. Being a proud man, he had to justify why he could not conquer this particular foe. Since the option that he was an inadequate huntsman was not acceptable, the creature must be supernatural in its abilities to escape his capture. The characteristics of the beast were exaggerated—it was huge, cunning, and not just an ordinary wolf. Captain Duhamel left defeated by what must truly be an extraordinary beast.

Captain Jean-Baptiste Duhamel led the hunt for a beast that was attacking and devouring victims in the Gevaudan, France, in 1794. He had a problem. He could not catch and kill the man-eating monster. Being a proud man, he had to justify why he could not conquer this particular foe. Since the option that he was an inadequate huntsman was not acceptable, the creature must be supernatural in its abilities to escape his capture. The characteristics of the beast were exaggerated—it was huge, cunning, and not just an ordinary wolf. Captain Duhamel left defeated by what must truly be an extraordinary beast.

The cognitive dissonance experienced by the French captain is reflected today by those who can’t capture Bigfoot. When normal processes and causes fail to satisfactorily explain events or answers to questions, then the reasoning slips beyond nature, into super nature, beyond the testable claims of science.

I call this “supernatural creep.” Although, I swear I’m not the first one to name it as such. I searched to find where I have seen this referenced before. (If anyone knows, please email me so I can give the originator due credit.) Once I noticed this kind of reasoning, I saw it frequently. Wherever I come across this concept, it reveals a bit about human nature:

If you have to choose between the belief or a rational explanation, the rational explanation may be that which gets rejected.

The effect of supernatural creep can be seen with UFOs, anomalous natural phenomena (Fortean topics), and in bizarre stories categorized as “high strangeness” (which I’ll explain a bit further on in this piece). A perfect example is that of “black dogs” whose appearance is spectral or demonic and is associated with either protection from or nearness of bad spirits. Could it be just a big black dog? Witnesses perceive that it’s more than that. When the circumstances feel uncanny, we slip into thoughts of the supernatural. An enjoyable book that illustrates supernatural creep quite nicely is Three Men Seeking Monsters by Nick Redfern. Fun stuff.

With phantom black dogs, there is a connection to local legends and ghost stories. A modern example of the dispute about supernatural creep is evident in the Bigfoot/Sasquatch community.

Bigfoot proponents generally fall into two camps: those who search for a real animal that functions as nature intended (called ‘apers’) and those who entertain the option that the entity is not natural (paranormalists).

California news station WMFD NewsWatch had a mild embarrassment on their hands this week, after they were informed that their story on an apparent UFO photograph was nothing more than the product of a readily available cell phone app.

The photo, which was taken by a resident of Mansfield named Tom Young, showed what appeared to be a disk-shaped craft floating above a small field, and it was so convincing that it caught the eye of news reporters. From there, the story spread like wild fire. Luckily OpenMedia.com recognized the silver spaceship immediately and called hoax.

The picture was created using the Camera360 smartphone app, and as WMFD discovered, it turns out Tom Young has that very same app on the cell phone he used to take his “unexplained” photo. When reporters contacted Young about the hoax, he remained firm that his photograph is of a bona fide UFO, but said he would check the photo again to make sure he didn’t “accidentally” use the app.

Shortly after midnight in early May, a strange aircraft approached Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport. It had the wingspan of a jumbo jet but flew at only about 40 miles per hour; 16 bright, bluish-white lights shone along the leading edge of its spindly wings. Concerned Phoenicians called the police to report an alien landing.

Sky Harbor’s air traffic control explained to Phoenix police that the ostensible UFO was really a solar-powered airplane: the Solar Impulse, an experimental aircraft completing the first, 19-hour leg of a flight across the United States. Then the police asked how it could fly at night if it’s solar-powered. (Batteries.)

[ … ]

The part of the UFO story that most pleases Dr. Bernard Piccard, the Swiss explorer who flew the Solar Impulse into Phoenix is that so many people noticed the lights, which are made from energy-efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Together, all 16 lights consume just 150 watts, Piccard says.

It’s been a busy week in the world of the weird. Not a good one for those who hope to see the dawn of new worldviews or a shift in the paradigm. In one week, three stories topped the abnormal news headlines — all three hyped stories fell apart.

While the stories are still unfolding, it’s clear that they turned out to be nothing as promised.

Click image to view the faked monster hump video.

First, there was this video of a lake creature swimming among boaters supposedly in Lough Foyle in Ireland. The video, taken by students one of which has the suggestive name Conall Melarkey, shows a hump moving rapidly through the water. The story gained widespread attention. The problem is that no animal can swim this way, no animal looks like this and, in consideration of the circumstances, the best explanation is that someone is towing a hump through the water. In all respects, this video is unbelievable. That is, it appears to be faked.

This second story is a bit more “inside baseball.” Many people will remember the Georgia Bigfoot Hoax of 2008 when two men, including Rick Dyer, teamed up with Bigfoot tracker Tom Biscardi to announce to the world they had a Bigfoot body in a freezer. There was even a press conference where Tom was adamant this was not a hoax, it was “the real deal.” Well, it was a hoax. Hard to fathom how a rubber suit with animal entrails would fool anyone for very long.

Rick has been telling anyone who will listen yet again that he has another Bigfoot body. This beast he supposedly shot during filming of a documentary called Shooting Bigfoot. The majority of Bigfoot enthusiasts did not buy it — once bitten, twice shy — and berated Dyer for his claims and his pay-per-view antics. The movie has come out and… there’s no body. But ever the profiteer, Dyer is still looking for money even though he says he is quitting the ‘footer world.’ Bye. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

It was a “road to Damascus” experience for the Mad Men era. In 1966, the respected astronomer J. Allen Hynek had gone—seemingly overnight—from a determined debunker to an ardent apostle of the UFO gospel. A longtime consultant to Project Blue Book noted for his skeptical stance toward UFOs, Hynek suddenly began telling anyone who would listen that the UFO phenomenon merited serious scientific scrutiny. The great director Stanley Kubrick was among the many who listened. In a 1968 Playboy interview promoting his science-fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick spoke approvingly of what he termed Hynek’s “belated but exemplary conversion” (Phillips 2001, 58).

In fact, the professor’s apparent trans­formation from skeptic to UFO proponent was not quite the conversion event that it appeared on the surface. Since his teens Hynek had been an enthusiastic though closeted student of the occult. The French-born Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist and UFO author, was one of the few persons who knew Hynek’s secret. Hynek once told Vallee that he had become an astron­omer in order to discover “the very limitations of science, the places where it broke down, the phenomena it didn’t explain” (Vallee 1996, 232). Nonethe­less, the scientist’s public U-turn gave a big boost to the UFO movement, lending it a measure of credibility, and made Hynek into a celebrity as the nation’s “foremost expert on flying saucers” (O’Toole 1966). For two decades people could point to Hynek and say, “He’s a trained scientist, an astronomer no less: if even he believes in this UFO stuff then there must be something to it.”

On the evening of July 2, 1947, several witnesses in and near Roswell, New Mexico, observed a disc-shaped object moving swiftly in a northwesterly direction through the sky. The following morning Mac Brazel, foreman of a ranch located near tiny Corona, New Mexico, rode out on horseback to move sheep from one field to another. Accompanying him was a young neighbor boy, Timothy D. Proctor. As they rode, they came upon strange debris — various-size chunks of metallic material — running from one hilltop, down an arroyo, up another hill, and running down the other side. To all appearances some kind of aircraft had exploded.

In fact Brazel had heard something that sounded like an explosion the night before, but because it happened during a rainstorm (though it was different from thunder), he had not looked into the cause. Brazel picked up some of the pieces. He had never seen anything like them. They were extremely light and very tough.

By the time events had run their course, the world would be led to believe that Brazel had found the remains of a weather balloon. For three decades, only those directly involved in the incident would know this was a lie. And in the early 1950s, when an enterprising reporter sought to re-investigate the story, those who knew the truth were warned to tell him nothing.

Major Jesse Marcel from the Roswell Army Air Field with debris found 75 miles north west of Roswell, N.M., in 1947. The debris was identified as that of a radar target.

The cover-up did not begin to unravel until the mid-1970s, when two individuals who had been in New Mexico in 1947 separately talked with investigator Stanton T. Friedman about what they had observed. One, an Albuquerque radio station employee, had witnessed the muzzling of a reporter and the shutting down of an in-progress teletyped news story about the incident. The other, an Army Air Force intelligence officer, had led the initial recovery operation. The officer, retired Maj. Jesse A. Marcel, stated flatly that the material was of unearthly origin.

The uncovering of the truth about the Roswell incident — so called because it was from Roswell Field, the nearest Air Force base, that the recovery operation was directed — would be an excruciatingly difficult process. It continues to this day, even after publication of three books and massive documentation gleaned from interviews with several hundred persons as well as other evidence. Besides being the most important case in UFO history — the one with the potential not to settle the issue of UFOs but to identify them as extraterrestrial spacecraft — the Roswell incident is also the most fully investigated. The principal investigators have been Friedman, William L. Moore (coauthor of the first of the books, The Roswell Incident [1980]), Kevin D. Randle, and Donald R. Schmitt. Randle and Schmitt, associated with the Chicago-based Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), authored the most comprehensive account so far, UFO Crash at Roswell (1991). From this research, the outlines of a complex, bizarre episode have emerged.

Six former members of Congress, who were paid $20,000 each, heard testimony on the U.S. government trying to cover up contact made with extraterrestrial life.

Jane Stevens explains her ‘third eye’ headband to the board of six former members of Congress.

Aliens may not exist, but millions of Americans think they do. And after more than 40 years, they’re finally getting a congressional hearing. Sort of.

On Monday, six former members of Congress, who were paid $20,000 each, plus expenses, heard testimony in a setting designed to resemble a Capitol Hill hearing room.

The goal: to prove that the U.S. government has covered up contact with extraterrestrial life.

For several hours, “UFOlogists” like Stanton Friedman, who calls himself the “original civilian investigator” of a supposed alien encounter in Roswell, N.M., in 1947, testified about extraterrestrial visits to Earth and an alleged conspiracy to suppress the truth about them.

“A flying saucer crashed and was retrieved by the government,” Friedman said of the Roswell episode.

“It’s clear that the materials were like nothing from this planet and it’s clear there was a coverup. . . Aliens are visiting, governments are lying.”

A UFO “truth” organization called the Paradigm Research Group is spending $600,000 — reportedly donated by a Canadian oil baron — to stage the week-long hearing and videotape the testimony for a documentary.

It’s the same group that filed a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website in 2011 urging President Obama to “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.”The petition received more than 50,000 signatures and an official White House response:

“The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”

But Paradigm’s executive director, Stephen Bassett, isn’t buying it. He said he’s out to force leaders in the U.S. to “acknowledge the E.T. presence.”

As the film opens, we see Greer going into a college auditorium in Santa Monica, the audience being checked with metal detectors for weapons. “Most people don’t know what a Dead Man Trigger is.” Very few people need one. But Greer has one – if the Conspiracy rubs him out, lots of sensitive documents get sent out to influential people. Excuse me while I barf – If Greer actually had any documents as hot as all that, he would have given them to the press long ago.

Greer’s Dead Alien

Most of what we see after that comes in no particular order. We are given UFO cases and UFO witnesses in a popcorn sort of manner, no sooner does one bounce up than it falls back and another takes its place. There is no time (or need) for exposition, or analysis. Every case, and every claim, is apparently completely solid and needs no further explanation or proof. The “organization” of the film was such that one could have taken almost any segment of it, and switched it with any other, and the change would scarcely be noticed. Some things that we are shown, for the most part quite briefly, include, in no particular order:

These supposed “inventors,” plus the ET technology, offers us unlimited Free Energy, but a conspiracy by those Greer calls the “Petro-fascists” keeps us using coal, oil, and nuclear power. Part of the Conspiracy is to keep us distracted by other things. Even Honey Boo-Boo is depicted as part of the Conspiracy to keep us distracted from ET truths.

I will do my best to make the occasional post, but just in case i’m a little less attentive than usual or a little slower with the posts, you’ll know why. I wouldn’t want you to think i was abducted by aliens or anything.😉

When skeptics and believers alike look for evidence in the paranormal fields of inquiry the overwhelming question regards evidence. Where is it? What is it? What should be counted as evidence?

We have video, picture, and eyewitness testimonials, and even physical evidence in some cases, but it never seems to hold up. Why is that? It’s possible that the reason we don’t have evidence that even believers can stand behind a hundred percent is tri-fold. I’m going to break down several topics of interest, and give my thoughts on why we might not have any usable evidence. Well, public evidence at least.

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Other Hairy Dudes

When Sasquatch researchers go searching for clues or evidence, one of the biggest finds happens to be the reason for the creature’s nickname: footprints in soft dirt, sand along creek or riverbeds, and other soft marshlands. We seem to have many footprints, but not any real fur, bone, scat, or even a body. When it comes to Sasquatch sighting and there is visual evidence of video or pictures, it seems to be very blurry or out of focus. When we do have fur or hair to be analyzed it comes back inconclusive at best, American Black Bear at worst.

So, what gives? Why is solid evidence of Bigfoot so hard to find? Here’s a few thoughts:

Sasquatch is metaphysical in nature

Perhaps Sasquatch is a physical creature only part of the time, almost as if he is half here, and half in another dimension. There are strange stories of Sasquatches and other creatures being picked up or dropped off in UFOs, arriving or leaving in green mists, and other just plain bizarre acts of arrival or disappearance. This is a strange enough idea, but if Sasquatch were metaphysical they could only leave partial evidence behind, like, say.. footprints.

Sasquatch is entirely supernatural, a woodland spirit

When one is sighted by human eyes, they’re as real as anything else, just ask a witness. But once photographed or recorded on video, the recordings lose definition or clarity, particularly while the subject is on camera. Of course, there are hoaxes out there, and we can and do get duped every now and then by those that are particularly well-done, but what of the unsolved evidence that really stands out?

The Sasquatch or Yeti tend to be the focal point of the shot, they’re blurry yet usually identifiable, though other pictures taken with the camera or even in the same shot, things are in focus and clear. If these creatures are either metaphysical or entirely supernatural, I would hazard a guess that they might have the ability to, well.. “blur” reality. Or perhaps have the ability to “jam” electronics if they want to be photographed. Hell, maybe it’s a passive thing.

If we can believe that something is a form of supernatural or metaphysical creature or entity, we can also believe they will be able to warp or effect reality if strong enough. If Sasquatch is a personification of the earth or woodlands, technology isn’t exactly its best friend…

Unidentified Flying Objects

The field of ufology makes me the most curious as to the things that are really going on, specifically why we don’t have particularly good evidence. This is especially perplexing considering the high speed cameras and advanced technology widely available to observe and record strange things everywhere.

One reason for lack of concrete evidence is actually quite simple: they don’t land on the ground and are just really good at avoiding being shot down or captured.

Aside from the theory of being fantastic escape artists, there could be several other reasons why we lack good evidence of extraterrestrial craft.

It’s an entirely natural phenomena on Earth

It’s possible that the UFOs we see in photographs and video clips are just a natural occurrence that we don’t quite understand. The spheres, lights, and even tube-like objects reported could be a form of plasma, a biological response to certain geological conditions, or even simply a kind of weather related phenomena.

The uniform shape, colors and speeds of similarly shaped objects can’t be denied, though. When someone actually manages to snap a photo, or are lucky enough to capture a video, they seem to blend into the skies they occupy, and video footage is usually too shaky to examine properly. Those particular objects might lend themselves to military craft. Good luck getting information about that.

They are multi-dimensional, or have a “bubble” around them.

We’ve seen UFOs capable of some astounding feats, many of which are completely un-repeatable by modern technology if piloted. The 90 degree turns and sudden bursts of speed exhibited by these objects tend to make me think that they are either not fully here, or have shields of some sort. The occupants of most space vehicles will tell speak of the toll it takes upon the body for exiting and re-entering our atmosphere. It’s certainly not the thickest around, but the g-force exerted during some of these maneuvers would crush a man. So, to have a machine perform these maneuvers with occupants is unheard of unless they have anti gravity tech that compensates.

A strange sight in the Texas night sky over the weekend had many people talking about fireballs and alien invasions. But, alas, the real culprit has been identified, a much more Earthly one.

Police in East Liberty County got a 911 emergency call at around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday from a person reporting “red fireballs in the sky.” Responding police officers, along with a dozen locals, described seeing four orange lights moving slowly in a line high in the sky. Police scopes revealed that the objects looked like hot air balloons — complete with flames — but were much smaller and did not have the signature gondola at the bottom.

Even more mysteriously, the lights were estimated to only be a few thousand feet off the ground, and yet they moved silently. No known airplane or helicopter technology could fly that low and remain so quiet. Within minutes the UFOs were gone, having disappeared into the night. They didn’t fly away but instead simply blinked out of existence; some eyewitnesses thought they had vanished behind a passing cloud and would reappear at any moment, but they never did.

Even so, the sighting wasn’t over: A second batch of the strange lights soon appeared, in an identical line and in a more or less identical formation, until they too vanished in the same pattern. Baffled police contacted the National Weather Bureau, the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies, though none of them could shed light on the mystery. No unusual aircraft appeared on radar, and though weather balloons had been launched earlier that day, they were not aloft in the area at that time — and in any event did not match the UFOs description. The National UFO Reporting Center was also contacted, though they had no information to offer.

The Unidentified Flying Objects became IFOs when members of a nearby wedding party informed police that the floating, flaming objects were paper lanterns lit just after their ceremony. Such Chinese lanterns are made of lightweight paper and a candle that provides the heat that lifts the lanterns as well as the light that makes them glow.

That explains why there was no aircraft engine sound, and the flame-like appearance. Each lantern represented a wish made by each of the guests for the new couple. The newlyweds apologized if their wish lanterns scared anyone, and the sheriff took it in stride but noted that the lanterns might pose a fire threat, and asked the public to notify police before lighting such lanterns in the future.

This is not the first time that paper lanterns have sparked UFO reports.

A single-page March 22, 1950 memo by Guy Hottel, special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, regarding UFOs is the most viewed document in the FBI Vault, our online repository of public records.Click image to download PDF copy.

It’s the most popular file in the FBI Vault—our high-tech electronic reading room housing various Bureau records released under the Freedom of Information Act. Over the past two years, this file has been viewed nearly a million times. Yet, it is only a single page, relaying an unconfirmed report that the FBI never even followed up on.

The file in question is a memo dated March 22, 1950—63 years ago last week. It was authored by Guy Hottel, then head of our field office in Washington, D.C. (see sidebar below for a brief biography). Like all memos to FBI Headquarters at that time, it was addressed to Director J. Edgar Hoover and recorded and indexed in FBI records.

The subject of the memo was anything but ordinary. It related a story told to one of our agents by a third party who said an Air Force investigator had reported that three “flying saucers” were recovered in New Mexico. The memo provided the following detail:

“They [the saucers] were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots.”

Guy Hottel Biography

Guy L. Hottel was born around 1902. He was a graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he was a star football player. He was later inducted into the university’s athletic hall of fame. He entered the FBI as a special agent in 1934. In December 1936, he was named acting head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; he was appointed special agent in charge the following May and served until March 1941. Hottel was re-appointed special agent in charge in February 1943 and served until 1951, when he took a position in the Identification Division. He retired in 1955. Hottel was married three times and had two sons. Following his FBI career, Hottel served as executive secretary of the Horseman’s Benevolent Association. He died in June 1990.

After relaying an informant’s claim that the saucers had been found because the government’s “high-powered radar” in the area had interfered with “the controlling mechanism of the saucers,” the memo ends simply by saying that “[n]o further evaluation was attempted” concerning the matter by the FBI agent.

That might have been the end of this particular story, just another informational dead end in the FBI files. But when we launched the Vault in April 2011, some media outlets noticed the Hottel memo and erroneously reported that the FBI had posted proof of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico and the recovery of wreckage and alien corpses. The resulting stories went viral, and traffic to the new Vault soared.

So what’s the real story? A few facts to keep in mind:

First, the Hottel memo isn’t new. It was first released publicly in the late 1970s and had been posted on the FBI website for several years prior to the launch of the Vault.

Second, the Hottel memo is dated nearly three years after the infamous events in Roswell in July 1947. There is no reason to believe the two are connected. The FBI file on Roswell (another popular page) is posted elsewhere on the Vault.

Third, as noted in an earlier story, the FBI has only occasionally been involved in investigating reports of UFOs and extraterrestrials. For a few years after the Roswell incident, Director Hoover did order his agents—at the request of the Air Force—to verify any UFO sightings. That practice ended in July 1950, four months after the Hottel memo, suggesting that our Washington Field Office didn’t think enough of that flying saucer story to look into it.

Finally, the Hottel memo does not prove the existence of UFOs; it is simply a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated. Some people believe the memo repeats a hoax that was circulating at that time, but the Bureau’s files have no information to verify that theory.

On the hill behind my yard where I grew up, there was an Arborvitae tree in the shape of Sasquatch — small pointy head, huge shoulders and massive long body.

The outline of this monstrous Bigfoot looming in the darkness caused me a little anxiety as I rushed from the car to the house. I grew up fascinated by monsters, ghosts and strange things. They seemed real, out there in the woods, in the cemetery, or just beyond my senses. I checked out every book about monsters, haunted houses and UFOs from my school libraries. I learned about Loch Ness and psychic powers on In Search Of… with Leonard Nimoy. I can’t really explain why I was interested in these things or why I still am. But I’m certainly not the only one. Ghost hunting and monster tracking is a popular hobby these days thanks to cable TV programming.

My views about the paranormal and the mysterious have radically evolved since childhood. My opinion has swung like a pendulum from belief to disbelief and I progressively ended up in the center. I learned how to apply scientific skepticism. Skepticism is a process of evaluating things by emphasizing evidence and the tools of science. It’s an approach that I personally adopted and practiced. Why? Because I didn’t want to be fooled. I didn’t want to swallow a comforting story when I would rather have the truth.

The younger me, the Bigfoot believer, assumed that Bigfoot is out there. Why not? I mean, hundreds of people tell of their experiences of seeing, smelling, hearing or otherwise experiencing something that they attribute to our popular description of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. Books are filled with stories. Stories are a gift to humanity but they are far from being hard data. Pictures of footprints and dark blobs are questionable. There’s hair here and there. There is also that famous film — named for those who captured the images, Patterson and Gimlin — taken of a large hairy creature striding rapidly across a California creek bed only to glance back and reveal her face for a moment.

I don’t have enough information to make a pronouncement on all the evidence. But it’s a logical error to say “why not?” when we really need to ask “why?” Why should I believe in this extraordinary creature? In the 50 years after that iconic film, the evidence for Bigfoot still consists of mainly lots of stories that can’t be double-checked. The rest of the evidence remains questionable — possible mistakes, misinterpretations, and a slew of hoaxes. After 50 years, we are no closer to finding Bigfoot. There is no body. The clues do not converge on a solid explanation. As much as I want to think that the creature is out there, strong evidence for it is still lacking.

Skepticism is a valuable thing to practice in proportion — not too much, not too little. This approach can be highly valuable when you are dealing with medical treatments, consumer products or investment. You can apply the same approach to other questionable claims like UFOs or psychics.

Sure, there is a downside. When you dig into the mysteries, they become . . .